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12
Mar
13

Design Wisdom: Engage Enthusiastically

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The “E” element in my alphabetic mnemonic list for successfully practicing design is:

Engage Enthusiastically.

Are you enthusiastically engaged and passionately sharing the work you are doing?

If you’re not feeling fully engaged in your work, and you’re not enthusiastically engaging others in your vision, it’s far less likely that your endeavor will succeed.

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The Enthusiasm Litmus Test

Be honest with yourself: are you excited about what you’re doing (or trying to do)? Are you engaged and passionate about your work as a design professional? If not, something needs to change. It might be your attitude, or it might be your circumstances. But this much is clear: you need to take the lead in cultivating your own enthusiasm and sense of engagement.

If you’re experiencing a deficit of enthusiasm, it usually means you’re not optimistic about the process and/or the results you anticipate. Ask yourself why you have doubts. Examining your attitude should spark in you a quest to at least identify the source of the problem. Once you identify it, you’ll either be able to remedy the situation or find that you can’t. But even in the worst-case scenario, you can seize upon the enthusiasm you feel for other aspects of the project rather than letting your doubts cast a pall over the entire works.

The point is, if you want to get others on board, you need to be selling them on your ideas. Nothing builds success and buy-in better than your enthusiasm for the ways and means of realizing a project.

So, What About Others?

Architecture involves a client, designer, materials suppliers and a builder at the very least. They’re all dynamic and essential players, so their engagement is crucial. Think of the gears of a watch or bike that need to interlock to produce results.

At the most basic level, engagement is about communication. The designer must be able to open channels of communication with as many stakeholders in each project as possible at the outset, then work to assure the open flow of information for the duration of the project.

When I was fresh out of architecture school, I used to picture the ideal client as someone who told you what they wanted, handed you a check and said they’d be back a year later for the finished product after taking a ‘round-the-world cruise. While the part about being paid in advance would be nice (!), trust me, you don’t want an absentee client – despite how tempting it might seem. If a client disappears during the design process and fails to communicate with you, I can assure you that you’ll be dealing with a different person when he returns. Even if you designed something perfectly suited to his expressly stated yearnings a year ago, his sense of what he wants will have changed during the course of his adventures.

You can see that communication is a key to engagement. But it’s not the only key. Think of it as the “what” of engaging a project participant. The “how” of engaging them is enthusiastically. Enthusiasm conveys the feelings — your feelings – your excitement and confidence about things to come. Enthusiasm is contagious. People naturally want to be part of a winning team. Your enthusiasm is critical in assuring them that they’ve found that team.

An Example from Design Practice

My first year out of college was the most demoralizing year of my life. Although I haven’t taken a poll, I’m guessing this isn’t uncommon among graduates of architecture, fine arts, and design schools. The reason? The transition from the lofty idealism of academia to the grittiness of real-world practice is akin to a high-speed car crash. Gone is the sense that you’re striving to change the world – replaced instead with the brain-numbing ennui of wading through an endless stream of “redline” drafting corrections.

The first major project I worked on that first summer out of school was for 185 units of public housing in Upstate New York. At the time hand-drafting was still the norm, and I can’t tell you how many times I had to “mirror-image” or otherwise make repetitive design changes to 185 bathrooms or kitchens by hand. The “joke” among the four drafting interns was: “Don’t draw more in the morning than you can erase in the afternoon.” Boredom and cynicism ruled. After a year, the corrosive nature of that environment finally got to me and I realized that I needed to move along for my own survival.

The school-to-practice transition probably isn’t any easier now than it has been for earlier generations of graduates. It pays to remember, though, that it’s not someone else’s job to make sure you stay enthusiastic and engaged. At least initially, you probably won’t find everything you’re looking for in one place. You might have to assemble your life a la carte to create the right conditions for enthusiastic engagement.  Don’t shy away from this task: it will help ensure your sanity and success.

You are the steward of your own passions. It’s your responsibility to actively cultivate your interests and enthusiasms so you can engage others with your optimism.

Remember, Engage Enthusiastically

Ed Barnhart, principal; Always by Design

*The banner graphic feature the letter E, cropped by a square to its unique alphabetic essence, utilizing the colors Eggplant and Emerald, and a photo of Engaged gears.

26
Feb
13

Design Wisdom: Delight in Diversity

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The “D” element in my alphabetic mnemonic list for successfully practicing design is:

Delight in Diversity.

Why is diversity in design practice so often simply tolerated rather than enthusiastically embraced?

If your business is business as usual, you might think of diversity as the foe of efficiency. But if you’re seeking new clientele and ways to adapt to an ever-changing world, diversity could be your best ally.

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Diversity: Friend or Foe?

Diversity tends to be the enemy of streamlining, simplifying and doing things quicker. Diversity gets in the way of creating a consistent style or process. When we need to map out a different approach to a design problem, we have to step outside the box. This takes time.

By contrast, the “business as usual” approach automatically reduces or eliminates choices or options. This means greater efficiency — less time spent categorizing, selecting, organizing. Therefore, the threat posed by diversity would appear to be the risk of not producing something at the lowest possible cost.

But what’s the real cost? Even if you’ve carved out a specialized niche, your goal isn’t turning out identical widgets at the lowest cost. The basic premise of design is the creation of something that is different, so the celebration of diversity should be axiomatic. In practice, it often appears to be the opposite. Design diversity among competitors is often mistakenly seen as threatening. But think about it:  people doing things differently from you aren’t your competitors; your competitors are the ones doing the same thing as you.

First, a Global Perspective

Before we look at the dynamics of your business and competition, let’s gain a broader perspective as to why diversity is important. First, the more tools we have at hand, the more adeptly we can fashion solutions that meet our needs (and the needs of our clients). A hammer is great for driving a nail, but not so good at drilling a hole.

Secondly, we live in an ever-changing environment that defies human comprehension. The resources we use and value today invariably will not be the same as those we will find useful tomorrow. A skill that languishes unappreciated today might suddenly be in high demand tomorrow.  A diversity of options boosts your capacity to adapt to changes. In this light, diversity can be thought of as a form of wealth that supplies you with a contingency plan for your future.

It becomes obvious, then, that cultivating diversity is essential to your long-term success. But what value does diversity bring to your day-to-day practice?

The Practical Utility of Diversity

On one level, we’d all like to practice design without competition. But that’s not a real option – especially in the shrinking world of our global economy. In fact, designers need competition in order to do their best work. Competition forces all of us to question what we do and why. Because it forces us to dig deeper, competition ultimately serves as a driving engine of evolution and growth.

In the marketplace, sameness is your worst enemy. Picture yourself surveying a store shelf. If everything on the shelf seems to be indistinguishable from the next item, you (as a consumer) will either grab the closest one or find the cheapest one. Trust me, as a designer you don’t want a potential client selecting you based simply on convenience or cost. Your success as a designer depends on being recognized as different. This is the day-to-day utility of diversity for your practice.

For the good of your practice, you want to cultivate and emphasize that diversity in the marketplace. This doesn’t mean that you should try to embody diversity single-handedly. You have to focus on your passions and what you do best. Use the diversity of the marketplace to highlight the areas that differentiate you from your competitors. For instance, there are many architects doing work very different from what I choose to do. I genuinely admire and find inspiration in the diversity of work presented by others – but I’m not interested in doing what they’re doing. My best successes are when clients (and prospective clients) can see the diversity I bring to the marketplace and engage me because of what sets me apart.

An Example from Design Practice

The value of diversity can be readily apprehended through travel. My first trip overseas was to study in Copenhagen, Denmark. By then I’d seen countless images of centuries-old European cities with bold insertions of cutting-edge contemporary work. Think of the Pompidou Centre (a.k.a. “Beaubourg”) by Piano+Rogers, the Lloyds of London building by Richard Rogers, or the more recent “Gherkin” by Foster and Partners.

As an American in Copenhagen, I was surprised and impressed by a sensibility that embraced both old and new. Here was diversity of design within continuously unfolding cloth, rather than as competing rivals. This principle was driven home most forcefully through my contact within the intimate scale of small individual shops and dwellings I encountered in the historic center of Copenhagen. For instance, a street-front shop might be housed in an 18th-century brick and stone building, where the heft and coarseness of the original materials was lovingly preserved along with a deep patina of wear, but skillfully contrasted with new frameless glass display windows and exposed, sleek contemporary lighting and mechanical systems. The effect was palpable — old and new alike gaining potency through juxtaposition with design elements that represented “otherness.” Here was a beautiful example of vitality emerging from diversity.

Think of your design practice as an object. Like an object it gains its value in large part by standing in contrast to those around it – in other words, by asserting the power of diversity.

Remember, Delight in Diversity

Ed Barnhart, principal; Always by Design

*The banner graphic feature the letter D, cropped by a square to its unique alphabetic essence, utilizing the colors Drab and Daffodil, and a photo of Diverse tools.

12
Feb
13

Design Wisdom: Create Courage

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The “C” element in my alphabetic mnemonic list for successfully practicing design is:

          Create Courage.

                  Design is a journey to a new place. New means risk. Why go there?

If you don’t have a reason to take a risk, you won’t. Courage means having a bold vision that overshadows the difficulty of taking the first step and persevering to reach a goal.

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Why do you design?

Before considering how and why to take risks, ask yourself “Why do I design? Why is the client hiring me?” Namely: to make a difference. To create something that is different.

“Different” means risk. If you can’t accept risk, you’ll be consigned to maintaining the status quo. So, let me repeat: “Why would someone hire you?” For the new places you can take them. Your brand is the sum of the risks you are willing to take.

Start with yourself

As a designer you undoubtedly strive to make the proverbial “better mousetrap” (or at least one that commands attention). If you believe that making something better means turning it upside down, then you’ll need the courage to face whomever or whatever you’re accountable to – a boss, a client or the bottom line of your business ledger.

The path to courage is redefining failure. Most of us are conditioned to see failure as having made a mistake (or being told that we’ve made a mistake). Cautious souls keep reminding us that practice makes perfect, and the pursuit of perfection overtakes our need to make a difference. In other words, if you’re not doing the same thing over and over again, you’re bound to be making mistakes as you take risks on new ideas. This mindset is fatal to creativity.  Condition yourself to see not taking risk as failure.

One of the lessons I learned from working with Peter Bohlin, FAIA, was his ability to take mistakes in stride. At a design critique he would invariably start a sentence with something like, “Well, I might be wrong here, but let’s try this and see where it takes us.” Ever armed with sincerity of intent, Peter seemed incapable of feeling embarrassed by an awkward idea or change of direction. That was inspiring. It’s not coincidental that he was selected by the AIA as their Gold Medal recipient in 2010.

Make it happen

All committed designers struggle to do the best work they can. A common lament is: “I just haven’t been lucky enough to find the right client.” The truth is, clients, and opportunities in general, are more often made than found.

Every client carries a load of fears and inertia similar to your own. Start by doing your due diligence. Hear out the problems and fears. Do your research and analysis of options and alternatives. Assess risks and possible consequences. Then find the compelling vision to get past them.

Your mission as a designer is to engage and excite yourself, your client and everyone else on the project sufficiently so as to redefine failure as not pursuing the compelling vision. If your vision is powerful enough, it pushes past the risks in the foreground and enables everyone’s courage to go the distance.

An example from design practice

The Chemical Heritage Foundation (CHF) is a cultural institution devoted to preserving the history of the chemical sciences and promoting awareness of the role of chemistry in society. CHF’s headquarters faces Independence National Historical Park in the historic Old City section of Philadelphia, two blocks from the Liberty Bell. Their anchoring structure is a five-story historic 19th century granite bank building.

Following several renovations to their existing buildings, CHF decided to move ahead with its first addition – a new wing that would accommodate meetings for up to 300 people. When I was hired for the project, the construction manager had already been selected and I was assigned to sub-contract to them as the designer side of a joint design-build team.

Given the historic context of the CHF headquarters on a street lined with 19th century masonry facades, both the client and my construction partner assumed that the addition would also be masonry. I saw this as problematic. First of all, we didn’t have a budget sufficient to construct anything as ambitious as the historic bank building. Just as important, the institution was interested in distinguishing itself as preeminent in its field. Philadelphia is a masonry city. You don’t distinguish yourself by being indistinguishable from your neighbors.

My client needed the courage to go in an unexpected direction. I saw the existing historic building as embodying half of the institutional mission – preserving history. Now we needed to create its complement: a structure that embodied the present and future of chemistry. What if the exterior were to be constructed using materials from the periodic table of elements? After researching potential materials I settled on using solid zinc panels as the dominant element. The oxidized grey of the panels not only demonstrated “chemistry in action” but also harmonized with color of the historic granite.

The CHF addition was the first zinc rainscreen panel building ever constructed in Philadelphia. It went on to receive several design awards as a lesson in how to successfully utilize contemporary design in a historic context.

Redefining failure as not pursuing a vision can give you the courage you need to overcome the fear of making mistakes along the way.

Remember, Create Courage.

Ed Barnhart, principal; Always by Design

*The banner graphic feature the letter C, cropped by a square to its unique alphabetic essence, utilizing the colors Cobalt and Catawba, and a photo of surfer with the courage to ride a wave.

29
Jan
13

Design Wisdom: Balance Beautifully

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The “B” element in my alphabetic mnemonic list for successfully practicing design is:

          Balance beautifully.

                 Whether you’re arranging flowers or designing a building, this concept is crucial.

We tend to think of balance as a state of harmony between extremes. We find it with difficulty and lose it too easily. Certainly, the process of finding (and maintaining) balance must be at the heart of any design practice. But balance alone isn’t enough. It’s really just the beginning.

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Begin by balancing

Finding balance is about the process of inquiry – learning what works. In terms of design, finding your balance really means learning your craft. Without a fundamental understanding or mastery of craft, it’s as though you’re a toddler learning to walk – you put all your effort into merely staying upright. You might have plenty of brilliant artistic ideas, but unless you can demonstrate mastery of your craft, you’re not likely to communicate your creative ideas effectively enough to have them embraced.

Basic mastery is about achieving fluency in a medium. It’s like learning a language – the process by which you gain the ability to explore ideas and communicate them to others.

Learning your craft means equipping yourself with a first-rate set of intellectual, creative and professional tools. This learning process has a pretty steep admission price for architects. Aesthetic mastery alone involves developing an understanding of how to work with proportion, color, form, texture, and light and shadow. Furthermore, the craft of an architect requires an ability to translate ideas to real “bricks and mortar”. A fundamental grasp of the nature of materials, structure, technology, and construction methods is essential if you want to gain competence in real-world practice.

Creating beauty

In truth, though, finding your balance is a lifelong pursuit. Even masters of the craft continually try to take their mastery to the next level. This is where beauty comes into play.

Unfortunately, since the advent of Modernism, the concept of “beauty” is often seen as being morally suspect or superficial. However, I’d challenge anyone to look at Mies van der Rohe’s Barcelona Pavilion and say that a search for beauty wasn’t integral to the design of the building.

Seeking a deeper level of balance is what I’m referring to as the search for beauty. Without beauty, all that remains is utility. Beauty is the notion of investing a level of craft sufficiently to convey a sense of effortlessness or grace. Think of a ballet. If the principal dancer were grimacing in pain, wobbling through her steps, the audience would hardly be enchanted. Harnessing techniques (or tools) adeptly enough so that they’re no longer the focus enables you to envelop others in a search for something larger and deeper – a place where beauty is revealed.

It is significant that beauty is subjective. Your searching to achieve a level of beauty puts you in control of how to harness your craft. Your unique vision and set of abilities will differentiate you from everyone else as you seek and ultimately find what balances beautifully.

An example from design practice

Shortly after becoming a registered architect I joined the office of Venturi, Scott Brown and Associates in Philadelphia. It was a heady time for the firm, which was involved in a multitude of projects — including museums in London, Seattle and Austin. My first project there was working on the new Sainsbury Wing of England’s National Gallery of Art.

Venturi’s three-story office was crammed with models, full-sized mock-ups and drawings tacked up everywhere. At first I wondered why there seemed to be an infinite number of versions of any given portion of each project. But as I worked on the museum addition, I came to understand the vast difference between merely “solving the problem” and finding a beautiful balance.

In addition to being a brilliant theorist, Robert Venturi had an incredible sense of proportion and visual rhythm. Nothing was ever “just pick a product.” Even the skylights for the galleries, visible only from neighboring buildings, were composed as minor fugues — featuring four mullion sizes and carefully proportioned glass panes. Every detail of that project was considered and re-considered for meanings beyond utility. As a result, the pieces of the completed project don’t just balance… they balance beautifully.

Only after we’ve attained sufficient mastery of our craft — so that it no longer consumes our conscious thoughts (or those of our benefactors) — do we have the freedom to invest our fullest imagination and effort toward shaping designs that inspire.

Remember, Balance beautifully

Ed Barnhart, principal; Always by Design

*The banner graphic features the letter B, cropped by a square to its unique alphabetic essence, utilizing the colors Burgundy and Brass, and a photo of boulders balanced at Stonehenge.

 

22
Jan
13

Design Wisdom: Anticipate but…

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The first element in my alphabetic mnemonic list for successfully practicing design is:

          Anticipate but…

            This involves a dance between two forces – preparedness and stillness.

Consider meetings, for example. They’re a regular fixture of any architecture or design practice.  It doesn’t really matter what kind of meeting it is — it could be with a client, consultant, or in-house design team. How do you arrive at a meeting? Prepared.

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Preparedness

What does “arriving prepared” really look like? Many people think that unless they’re running the meeting or making a presentation, all they need to do is show up and stay awake. Let me tell you, if someone felt it was important enough for you to attend a meeting, just “showing up” won’t cut it. I don’t care if you’re an intern who just got hired yesterday… you need to be actively prepared.

Being prepared starts with anticipating what should, could or can’t happen in any given situation. You need to get yourself mentally engaged well before a meeting begins. Who is attending and why? What’s the agenda? Is there a hidden agenda? What do you want to get from the meeting? Is there something you can offer?

Even if you’re not a designated presenter at a meeting, preparing actively lifts your participation to a higher level. It means that you’ve probably come up with questions and maybe done some research or talked to others beforehand. Your curiosity and preparation help you get ready to connect ideas, while others are just warming up. You might not even utter a word at the meeting, but I guarantee that your deeper level of engagement will pay off by enhancing your creativity, knowledge and professionalism.

Stillness

The “but…” portion of the mnemonic title above refers to stillness. It means: Don’t rush in with preconceived assumptions or with answers. In the world of design, where creative thought is paramount, we often refer to having a “beginner’s mind.” This doesn’t mean you need to be a blank slate. It’s more about having receptive capacity – the ability to take in more. Don’t underestimate the importance of this ability. It represents the “still” side of being prepared, the anticipation of new ideas.

After arriving prepared to your meeting, stay still. You might think you have the answers or know the outcome of whatever endeavor you’re undertaking. But don’t assume that you’re right. In almost any activity, your collaborators will have different ideas as to what the problems are and how to define success. It takes time for everyone to get onto the same playing field. That playing field may or may not be the one that was in your head when you entered the meeting.

If you leave a meeting thinking exactly what you did when you entered the room, the meeting was a failure. Entering a meeting prepared – to both absorb and offer new questions and ideas – means that you and everyone else in the meeting are likely to leave in a different (and better) place than when you arrived.

An example from design practice
Midway into the design of a university library addition we were having difficulty reconciling the client’s “wish list” of needs with their available funding. A meeting was called with the client. In anticipation of that meeting, I prepared by looking at alternative storage systems, trade-offs between seating and media storage, remote storage options, cheaper construction techniques and a host of other strategies for packing the proverbial ten pounds into the five-pound bag. Nevertheless, I was anticipating a cranky client.

I began the meeting, not by verbalizing my assumption that the client would be disappointed, but rather by inviting him to join me in sharing ideas. Fortunately the client had anticipated and arrived prepared for our meeting too. He had evaluated options for: a more robust program of interlibrary loan participation, elimination of the redundancy of materials stored in multiple format types, and increased reliance on digital sources of information, including a variety of on-line subscriptions.

By the end of the meeting we were both pleasantly surprised. Instead of reconciling ourselves to not being able to achieve the original objectives, we found ourselves re-energized – envisioning the library in an expanded role for social engagement on campus. We were able to formulate a workable approach for: meeting the collection needs, while increasing the quantity and diversity of seating and meeting places, and at a cost lower than initially thought possible.

That’s what happens when prepared minds come together: you can always expect to arrive someplace other than where you expected. And remember, this dance of “Anticipate but…” applies to virtually every phase of the design process, not just meetings.

Remember, Anticipate but…

Ed Barnhart, principal; Always by Design

*The banner graphic features the letter A, cropped by a square to its unique alphabetic essence, utilizing the colors Avocado and Azure, and a photo of river rapids representing an anticipated journey.


15
Jan
13

Giving Back to your Community

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What do you give back to your community? Maybe you volunteer at your local food bank, or mentor kids after school, or serve on the board of a non-profit organization.

The key to volunteerism is getting involved in something that you’re passionate about.
Although one may get an occasional pat on the back from others, most of the reward of volunteering is internal – one’s own sense that they’ve helped others, for a cause they strongly believe in, without asking for anything in return.

Giving Back in 2013
For this year, I’ve decided to give back to the community I feel most strongly a part of:
the design community. That may sound pretty abstract, but it’s not. Let me tell you why. One of the most universal themes of the human condition is the contrast of youth versus age. The former is associated with agility and speed, the latter with deliberation and wisdom. As I look with admiration to the nimbleness of recent design program graduates in producing slick imagery, I also am reminded of the accrued wisdom of real world practice. As an architect practicing for over 25 years, I’d like to offer back a distillation of some of that experience.

Recording of, and Learning From Experience
Starting with my freshman year of architecture school, I was exhorted to keep a design journal. I’m not sure how many journals and scrapbooks have accrued since then, but certainly enough to fill several filing cabinets. Looking back through some of them this past year, I was struck by how some design themes have remained quite constant through the years of education and practice, while others were momentary enthusiasms which were quickly abandoned. Through the lens of time, some patterns have become visible.

The Wisdom Project
The process of identifying these recurrent patterns has become an endeavor I refer to as “the wisdom project”. The goal of the project is to articulate the essential elements of design practice. While my experience and resulting ideas of practice are specifically shaped from the arena of architectural design, my belief is that the wisdom is rather applicable to all areas of creative endeavor. Although some of the concepts may be of use to the lone artist toiling in the garret, the emphasis is on artistic pursuits in a commercial and social context. In other words, my focus is on applied design, where clients and collaborators are an integral part of the process toward realizing a finished work of art/architecture.

A Peek Toward What’s Upcoming at axdblog
My intention therefore is, over the course of 2013, to essentially produce, in serial fashion from A to Z, a primer entitled: the wisdom project: essential elements of design practice. It is my hope that students and practitioners alike will find helpful insights to better their own artistic endeavors.

Ed Barnhart, AIA; principal, Always by Design

31
Dec
12

The 12 Best Architecture Books read in 2012, plus…

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The Architecture of the Barnes Foundation
Tod Williams and Billie Tsien / Skira Rizzoli Publications, 2012; $50
Regardless of what you may know or feel about the relocation of the Barnes Foundation art collection from Merion to Philadelphia, put it aside to read this book. The new Barnes Foundation is truly a world-class piece of architecture. Beyond the sublime success of the building itself is the marvel that architects Tod Williams and Bille Tsien were, in a scant six months’ time period after completion of the building, able to provide a highly readable overview of the project. My only wish, having served as the project architect for Venturi, Scott Brown & Associates renovation of the original Barnes Foundation, is that greater depth of documentation be given to the evolution of the design of the new facilities. But then again, leaving the reader thirsting for more perhaps isn’t a bad thing.

The Barnes Foundation – Two Buildings, One Mission
David B. Brownlee / Skira Rizzoli Publications, 2012; $12.95
While we’re on the subject of the Barnes Foundation, this little book really packs a lot in! Even though I felt already highly knowledgeable on the subject, the presentation on the original Paul Cret designed complex in Merion is particularly well told and provides fresh insights. The overview of the new Philadelphia Barnes Foundation is less compellingly rendered, probably owing to the rush to have the book on hand for the opening of the facilities, but still provides a worthy read. This book delivers the best bang for the buck of any on my list.

The Battle for the Life and Beauty of the Earth: A Struggle Between Two World-Systems
Christopher Alexander et. al. / Oxford University Press, 2012; $45
Ever since originally reading the Timeless Way of Building by this author decades ago, I’ve been intrigued with Christopher Alexander’s search for a more soul-nourishing means of creating buildings. While his ideas are somewhat related to “Design-Build” practices, they go much further. This book chronicles the evolution of an educational campus in Japan, utilizing his precepts from design through completion. Although written a full 25 years after work ended on the project, its emotional triumphs and tragedies are rendered as though they only just occurred yesterday.

Thomas Heatherwick: Making
Thomas Heatherwick / Monacelli Press, 2012; $75
I initially got this book for the shear visual delight of the work. The projects are fresh and compelling – a virtuoso blend of materials used in inventive ways and propelled by interesting conceptual propositions. The real payoff though is the writing. You swear Mr. Heartwick is sitting in front of you, having a matter-of-fact conversation about how simply following his instincts produced some rather delightful stuff. It makes you wish everyone were seemingly this accessible and extraordinary at the same time. Be forewarned though, this hefty tome is for desktop use only!

Wang Shu: Imagining The House
Wang Shu / Lars Muller Publishers, 2012; $65
This book is the sleeper of the crowd. Were it not for his being awarded the 2012 Pritzker Prize, most architects would never have heard of Wang Shu, and this book would likely not have been produced. Its formatting is a bit off-putting and not for a casual reader. Pages are single-side printed and most are folded in on themselves, resulting in almost nothing being visible without unfolding. Most pages are reproductions of portions of the architect’s sketch books, with little or no explanatory text other than an introduction to the project as a whole. That having been said, for architects having the patience of an archaeologist and comparable willingness to dig, the reward is a bountiful journey of discovery. And, despite the small amount of text given, the imagery conveyed and apparent candor are delightful.

Tenryu-Ji: Life and Spirit of a Kyoto Garden
Norrris Brock Johnson /Stone Bridge Press, 2012; $39.95
This book is also one of discovery. It describes the author’s journey – one of great reverence and fascination in seeking to understand and convey the delights of one of the great Japanese gardens of pre-Modern times. The narrative, highly readable despite its shear scholarly density, skillfully weaves back and forth between historical research and present-day, first-hand observations. This duality creates a very rich portrait of the subject. One of the few regrets about the book is that many of the accompanying black and white photographs, which make up the majority of the illustrations, are reproduced in very low contrast, making them appear faded and less than a joy to contemplate.

A Visual Inventory: John Pawson
John Pawson / Phaidon Press Limited, 2012; $49.95
In contrast to the preceding book, the images of John Pawson’s book nearly pop off the pages. Many of them exemplify the best of minimalism, namely that with the editing and framing, what remains can only be described as richness. The book features a single image per page, top and outer edge justified. Within that simple rigor, surprisingly I found there to be a refreshing casualness to “parings” of facing images. Sometimes there were overt similarities, sometimes clear contrast, but plenty offering an invitation to sit a while and ponder – amidst the beauty.

20th Century World Architecture: The Phaidon Atlas
Lindsey M. Roberts / Phaidon, 2012; $200
This book qualifies as a guilty pleasure. It’s not just a box of candy, it’s an entire candy store of architecture between two covers. (Warning: It may break both your spending budget and your coffee table.) The scope of the work is rather breathtaking, trying as it does to fairly encircle the globe. Needless to say, with that much breadth of subject, it is impossible to present with any justice the depth and intimacy of any single work. The result is akin to a sugar-crash after a 750-piece candy orgy. The best cure: store it away and get back to focusing on the particulars of a project you can dig into.

High Line: The Inside Story of New York City’s Park in the Sky
Joshua David and Robert Hammond / FSG Originals, 2011; $29.95
By now, the transformation of a derelict elevated rail line on Manhattan’s West Side into a unique urban park, is a well-known success story. Less well known is how the project grew, from an isolated idea shared by two young men with no prior planning experience, into a broadly shared urban renewal vision. The story is told, largely sequentially, in a conversational style of recollections, alternating between the two primary instigators and collaborators on the project. The weaving in of personal stories, thwarted efforts and shear serendipity at times makes for a very engaging read.

Michael VanValkenburgh Associates: Reconstructing Urban Landscapes
Anita Berrizbeitia / Yale University Press, 2009; $65
Changes in our environment is a topic on everyone’s mind these days. As we shift our gaze away from moving to the” next frontier” of unspoiled landscape and instead look to renovating, and restoring already spoiled landscapes, our jobs as designers becomes increasingly complex. This book presents a selected portfolio of projects illustrating the ideas and approaches used by Michael Van Valkenburgh Associates in doing such reclamation work. What stands out is their ability to work with sites whose native qualities were erased long ago – and yet be able to instill a deep sense of inspired belonging – to a time and a place that, while entirely new, feels timeless.

Philosophy for Architects
Branko Mitrovic, Princeton Architectural Press, 2011; $24.95
As someone who has been out of architecture school for a good many years, it was with some degree of trepidation that I approached a book sounding like Philosophy 101. (I’m still feeling a bit scarred from my college (re)readings of Derrida.) To my surprise I found a highly compelling read, grounded in terms of design ideas and human experience and perception. The net result was gaining insights about why we look at things the way we do and why it matters. Probably more than anything else though, the book served to provide me with a better understanding of history itself, not just philosophy.

100 Ideas That Changed Architecture
Richard Weston / Laurence King Publishing, 2011; $29.95
What do “Elevator” and “Phenomenology” have in common? Well, as it turns out, the pie of architectural history can be sliced in some pretty inventive ways. In this fresh approach, 100 topics are strung together in a generally chronological order of when they were created or started having an important role in architecture. Topics range from spatial forms (wall, dome), to materials (brick, glass), to technology (air conditioning, computer-aided design), on to theory (genius loci, complexity and contradiction), and practice (sustainability, parametric design). Each topic is presented as a two-page illustrated spread and can be savored easily in piecemeal fashion – presenting a delightful smorgasbord indeed.

And, although I can’t give an as-read report on this one yet, near the top of my pile to read in 2013 is:
The Agile City: Building Well-being and Wealth in an Era of Climate Change
James S. Russell / Island Press, 2012; $17.95
The author and I, near the start of our careers were colleagues at the same design firm. As my own work seems increasingly to be about finding the essence of time and place for specific projects, Jim’s perspective has become increasingly large in its purview, and engaging broader policy discourse. He is presently the architecture columnist for Bloomberg News. In his present book he makes the case that the war on global warming can best tackled by retrofitting cities, suburbs, and towns. I’m looking forward to a good sustainable read.

Ed Barnhart, AIA

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